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eromain Joined: 16 Jun 2004 Posts: 30 |
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 3:29 am Post subject: just got back |
hi guys, just got back and have various replies to make in next few days. in the meantime the whole of the child abuse thread on the aussie bk chat forum has mysteriously dissappeared. i posted a question yesterday asking where it is, and that has also dissappeared. cheers eugene
Guest |
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 4:45 pm Post subject: |
I am no longer admin on that forum so I don't know anything. I don't have an account either anymore (I have deleted myself to be more clear). It's a dead forum with little visitors and even less "discussions". So I wouldn't worry about your thread disappearing there.
zhukov Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 86 |
Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 9:00 am Post subject: |
Yes Kevin thought I recognised you. I remember the old 'dinosaur saga' that raged on that forum. Never resolved, or was it? You always seemed to be a questioning thinker there....nice to see you again
Guest |
Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 2:51 pm Post subject: |
nice to see you too and no, the dino's are still unresolved
eromain Joined: 16 Jun 2004 Posts: 30 |
Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 10:18 am Post subject: Re: Child Abuse in The BK |
HI hanuman
hanuman wrote:
Questioning is and should be an integral part of learning. Currently, in lokik US education at the secondary and tertiary levels, the role of the teacher as sage on the stage is being replaced by the role of guy by the side. Lecturing is being replaced by cooperative learning and inquiry based learning. The soul on the gadhi needs to be replaced by the facilitator in the corridor of spiritual learning. There is much learning by questioning and having questions answered. Though the learning modality of the murli may not become obsolete, there is a need for Raj Yogi to sit and discuss gyan rather than being lectured by a soul on the gadhi. Each and every one as a Raj Yogi can contribute points to the discussion. Active learning involves questioning. I usually invite and encourage my students to ask critical thinking questions in the classroom and the laboratory. We as gyanis are not vessels in which knowledge is poured. That is passsive learning which is having a deminished status in the current era of the Information Age. There is still some place for spoon feeding. However, as gyanis, irrespective of our lokik levels of education, critical thinking skills have to be refined with spiritual advancement. If there is a lag in development, we can become individuals who live in our heads only or robots of gyan or gyani robots. [b]A computer can spit out points of the murli. A computer cannot inculcate gyan and build a stock of wisdom based on facing the challenges of life.
Got to say thank you for the above paragraph. For me you have summed up some of most unfortunate characteristics of the current pedagogic approach and culture in raja Yoga, and the content of their teaching curriculum if I can call it that is just too potent for such an approach. To combine very powerful metaphysical ideas with first person and second person experiential exposure of such extreme immersive effect, and then to do so in a culture in which serious questioning is taboo is extremely reckless. To combine the passive learning you refer to with such internally combustible substances as are contained within BK beliefs is leading to problems that would appear to last for many years. Hypnotists around the world are making very good livings using exactly the same techniques for installating ideas within both conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. The old bk metaphor you reject –of knowledge as a liquid which can simply be poured into a vessel- is itself evidence of how little they understand the interactivity between ideas and consciousness. The supposed metaphysical truth or falsity of an idea is irrelevent here. Even the most true idea can act like a slow acting poison if delivered badly, just as virtually all life-saving medicines will kill if injected in the wrong place.
eromain Joined: 16 Jun 2004 Posts: 30 |
Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 10:22 am Post subject: |
HI kevin,
Kevin wrote:
there is one feeling I have since long and that is DISAPPOINTMENT. .
I just wanted to say that I really heard these words from you very deeply. best wishes eugene
hanuman Joined: 23 Jun 2004 Posts: 174 |
Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2004 2:56 am Post subject: Child Abuse In The BK |
Eromain, The learning at this web site is healthy because there is dialogue in which there is a great deal of Q & A. At centers there is a need for more classes in which there is an exchange of Q & A and e-classes in which yogis and their teachers discuss gyan. One mistake of many teachers, including senior teachers is to assume that students have empty intellects. Such teachers cannot be the best learners and as a result are not the best teachers. _________________ Om Shanti, To my brothers and sisters. Love to you all, Errol bhai
Guest |
Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2004 12:05 pm Post subject: |
eromain, thx
eromain Joined: 16 Jun 2004 Posts: 30 |
Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:57 am Post subject: reply to paul finally !!! :-) |
hi Paul, first of all sorry to take so long to get back to you.
Quote:
It has been rightly said that the most dangerous persons are those who feel that they are never wrong...or could never be wrong. I therefore congratulate you on 'stepping away from yourself', so to speak, and inviting others to have a say.
Crikey my head hurts sometimes with all the thinking I have had to do to try to negotiate myself through all of this. I am extremely grateful for all of the comments on this site from everybody, particularly the challenging and critical ones. I have criticized the BK organisation but only in order to help it improve and it is my assumption that criticism directed at me is for the same purpose. So I cannot re-iterate enough that I see this thread as no more mine than anybody else’s. Here are some responses to your post, which by the way, I hope you can tell I really enjoyed. (Some of the points you make to me are similar to some made by gyaniwasi so you might want to see my forthcoming reply to him.)
Quote:
So it should be with the BK organization. No one who has known the organization from the inside believes that the trance possessions are faked. Even those who have left understand that there is an entity who takes charge of Dadi Gulzar's body. That being - self identified as Shiva / Bapdada / Almighty God - is the helmsman of the movement.
I’m not so sure that it is an understanding so much as a belief but even if we take this point as unchallenged my response remains but if this is the case why then after ‘he’ told them several years ago to institute child protection policies havent they? (Obviously this is a rhetorical question Perhaps they interpret ‘him’ as speaking in principles and it is their job to translate such into actual instructions. Perhaps they only follow some of his instructions. Perhaps even just in interpreting his instructions they accidently filter out some of what ‘he’ intends. Perhaps they only ask ‘him’ certain questions and like the delphic oracle ‘he’ only answers what he is asked. For example I was told by london that some of the big guns in india wanted to take legal action against me. I don’t know who and I don’t know what kind of legal action they think they could take. They asked ‘him’ and he said that they should use love before law. Now, what exactly is the instruction in this reply? Does it mean that they shouldn’t sue or they shouldn’t sue yet? Either way it hardly constitutes pro-active leadership. He is acting more like a spiritual consultant than the ‘Boss’ in my opinion, but certainly it is possible to interpret it as a boss making a decision. But if they went ahead and sued me next week his supposed servants who claim not to be in charge could say that they tried love over this last month and it hasn’t worked and now they are going on to plan b. So even if lets say ‘he’ intended that I should not be sued and he thinks he told them that, they could still go ahead and do it and think that they are following his instructions. Perhaps you only get perfect communication if there are no humans in the chain whatsoever . So whether it is God or whether it is some other entity coming into her body there is still scope for imperfect management. Now your point of course is that if he is a supernatural/superior entity able to do amazing things like enter another’s body surely he must take some responsibility for such imperfect communications and the poor outcomes that might result from it. My response to that is that I agree you have posed a question they or ‘he’ (or both) needs to answer but I think to pose such a challenge in a report on child protection provision is overstepping the boundaries between practical child protection and metaphysics. There are lots of organisations with outstanding child care and they have achieved such without God’s help so unless the BKs are claiming that God is actually obstructing such an end (which would be a very strange thing to say about God) I think that all the metaphysics and theology is not central to my purposes. And as I write to gyaniwasis I also feel it would be unethical to mix disclosure on their child protection record with attacks on their religious beliefs
Quote:
The BK following and - more importantly - the upper echelon, believe that being is GOD. They therefore feel that they must obey his edicts. For them, he is the father. And he is the BOSS. The directions and guidance come from him. It is true that he cannot be there on a regular or daily basis to micro manage things. However, the BKs are, in effect, his agents - doing their best to give reality to his vision.
I think that as the author of the report ethically speaking I have a duty not to allow personal theology to influence the whole issue of child protection. Whether I believe it is God, or whether I believe it is not God must in my opinion be kept out of the matter. I trust everyone will respect that right or wrong this is the position I feel it is my duty to adhere to. That being said I also think that even for Bks the case of ‘his’ true identity shouldn’t sway them one way or another as to child protection matters. Surely the bks are only his agents if one buys into their beliefs about who he is. But even if they were, an agent is still morally responsible for his actions. And as I say on a practical level I’m really not sure even assuming it is God that he is simply ‘the boss’ of the BK organisation as you put it. The classic boss’ jobs seems shared amongst ‘him’ and the top administrators. In all the years I visited Abu I never saw ‘him’ really running the organisation. I saw ‘him’ conduct classes and meet people. I saw ‘him’ meet with the seniors but I never saw ‘him’ giving out administrative instructions. I never saw ‘him’ checking the accounts or sending out emails or any of the other hundreds of things somebody is doing to run the organisation. When you say ‘he’ could not be there on a daily basis I ask why not? Why doesn’t ‘he’ come for eight hours a day like any other CEO of a big organisation? Clearly ‘he’ would appear to have chosen not to or perhaps the choice is not his to make. Who knows?. ‘He’ appears to me to lead the religion, but not run the organisation behind the religion. In the meantime others make the day to day decisions. That they do so in some amount of consultation with ‘him’ is reasonable to assume, but how much, I have no idea. Obviously you or I have no more than guesses about why ‘he’ does what he does, but lets also admit that we have hardly any idea of what ‘he’ does. Is ‘he’ in charge on an administrative basis, I simply do not know, but on balance I doubt it. What is clear though is that there are others who are saying that they are in charge administratively speaking. And certainly ‘he’ is not arguing with them. It says on all the literature who they are so surely it makes sense to direct my efforts towards them. Certainly the ‘guy’ you say is the boss told them to institute child protection policies several years ago and it hasn’t happened yet so maybe like lots of bosses not all of ‘his’ instructions are acted upon. But to say that is not to exonerate him. The BKs pretend to the world to be a respect-worthy organisation with wise looking spiritual looking ladies in charge. And it kind of looks groovy. Simultaneously they are hiding from the outer world the belief that God comes down in to one of these ladies and talks to everyone, knowing that the outer world would howl with derision at such a claim. To its own members it propounds the opposite message to the one it presents to the world –it insists to its members that the spiritual looking ladies are definitely not in charge. Maybe we are right to be confused. But I am not a member anymore. I don’t need to juggle incompatible messages. I’ll deal with the administrative heads they are presenting to me. I don’t even know who this visitor is, nor what administrative role he plays. And technically speaking I can’t even know for sure that ‘he’ exists as he does not even have his own body. All I want is to encourage the organisation to take proper care of its members and I can do that by communicating with its official administrators.
Quote:
How then can we leave that being out of the picture? The fact that the being is incorporeal matters not. In essence, we are all spirit.
You may believe that we are all spirit, but that is essentially a religious belief and as such I contend it should not shape an assessment of child protection provision. And Him not having a body does matter in my opinion. For example it is one of the reasons that ‘he’ cannot be the administrative head of the bk organisation. ‘He’ may or may not be God, but one thing is for certain –‘he’ is not a person, he is not a human being. If ‘he’ committed murder ‘he’ would not go to gaol, it would be Dadi Kulzar who would be left to serve the time. In the eyes of society at large only human beings can commit crimes and only human beings can lead organisations. Child protection is essentially a civil and administrative matter and so the civil administrative leaders as opposed to the spiritual or idealogical leaders are responsible. It follows therefore that it is unacceptable if the admin heads namely Dadi Prakashmani and Dadi Janki were to claim that they were making administrative decisions based upon instructions from elsewhere. If they were to be so they would be not just negligent in their administrative duties but actually abusing such. They would be guilty of lying to the public. It may well be the job of administrative heads to interpret spiritual principles and consider these in their decisions but that does not mean they are not responsible for their decisions. I would think that lawyers at the papacy advise the pope in the same way. God may well be whispering in his ear so that his pronouncements are infallible but that does not absolve him from civil accountability if he instructs his organisation to act upon such whisperings. So I think that ‘his’ incorporeal nature is irrelevent for my rather practical purposes, though I agree that spiritually and ideologically and ethically it is impossible to extricate him from some shared responsibility for what goes on in 'his' name. As I say I have more on this subject in my forthcoming reply to gyaniwasi. Best wishes eugene
eromain Joined: 16 Jun 2004 Posts: 30 |
Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2004 4:13 am Post subject: |
eromain wrote:
HI kevin,
Kevin wrote:
there is one feeling I have since long and that is DISAPPOINTMENT. .
I just wanted to say that I really heard these words from you very deeply. best wishes eugene
i was reminded of this piece in my original reply to child T.
Quote:
Raja Yogis make extravagant promises to the person turning up at their door. They offer heaven in the next life and a near perfect lifestyle for this one. What they don’t tell you is that ninety nine percent of the people that sign up ultimately fail and leave bitterly disappointed. I think it extremely dishonest of Raja Yoga that they take absolutely no responsibility for their failures, even though most of their students will end up, by their own definition failures. An experienced senior looking out over a class of students at any given day of any given year knows that of her hundred students, on average only one or two will be in the fold in ten years time. But she directs everything she says to that one. In her opinion all the rest, who will founder and fall, will deserve whatever post Raja Yoga problems they inherit. Even if it is Raja Yoga teaching and practices that will sow the seeds of those problems, she will take no responsibility for them. If in her quest to find and make her king she damages others, that is their problem. And every Raja Yogi of any substantial amount of time in the organisation has watched this merciless and exploitative system in action. Generation after generation pass through each centre. They leave and are replaced by a new batch, each one being told that they have miraculously just got in the door before time runs out and the world ends. A few years later they have gone. New people come, are seduced by the same promises and the same spectacular early progress. Gradually they too get disillusioned and eventually leave. They take with them not the health, wealth and happiness they were promised but often anguish, confusion and great personal dislocation. What they always take with them, without fail, and it is a horrible gift for a spiritual university to bestow on its graduates is a heavy and permanent disappointment.
appendix g of my report http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~eromain/childprotection.htm
gyaniwasi Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 167 |
Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2004 1:25 pm Post subject: |
Eugene, Kevin: Interestingly, I was just remarking on something like this in a response to celticgyan's post on Ascended Masters in the All and Everything Forum. In one of the Year 2000 meetings (which I saw on tape) there is a strained and somewhat distraught look on the faces of those who are being admonished to complete efforts since the Advanced Party are waiting etc. It is faith and hope that is at work there - but then isn't it that that sustains bhakti also ......? Dunno, I might be wrong. _________________ "Those were the days my friend ...."
hanuman Joined: 23 Jun 2004 Posts: 174 |
Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 1:20 am Post subject: Child Abuse In The BK |
Eromain, Kevin and Gyaniwasi, I feel that it is time for the BKs to become real. Real in the sense of understanding that the 99/100 students who leave should not be regarded as failures. These students should be given their due as graduates of a spiritual institution and should leave in better shape than when they originally signed up. I sometimes comtemplate the karmic consequences of decision makers in an institution who are callous about the spiritual welfare of alumni. _________________ Om Shanti, To my brothers and sisters. Love to you all, Errol bhai
Guest |
Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 3:50 am Post subject: |
Gyaniwasi wrote on 12 Sep, 04 : "In one of the Year 2000 meetings (which I saw on tape) there is a strained and somewhat distraught look on the faces of those who are being admonished to complete efforts since the Advanced Party are waiting etc. " In an Avyakta Vani dated 13.4.2003, which was narrated before a a large group of BK teachers including the administrative chiefs, but was not published officially, Avyakta Baapdada had used very stern language and indirectly issued a warning that those who do not mend their ways may be sent to Iraq. It is not just a warning to the teachers but also to the students to mend their ways in time. But I do not understand why the Avyakta Vani was not published when its unofficial copies (handwritten versions) have already been circulated by many BK students. Arjuna
gyaniwasi Joined: 22 Feb 2004 Posts: 167 |
Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 8:02 pm Post subject: |
Arjuna: That was an unusual but interesting threat coming from Bd (Bigdaddy/Baapdada)!! Not like them to lose their cool. It must have been a playful reprimand otherwise it seems to signify a sort of frustration. Errol, my friend:What baffles me is the continual practice of laying the blame at the door the seniors when they themselves are victims or prisoners of a system set up by one or more personages who are supposed to be incorporeal. If, as in your case for instance, the Dadis - Baba's right hand administrators and corporeal trustees - are to be blamed and they are highly praised by him as being near perfect (strained countenance notwithstanding) then isn't it strange that you should find them so lacking when he doesn't? In the same tape Bd were embracing The Very One who gave you the "unfair" ultimatum! Why, then, does he leave you - also his beloved child - out in the cold when his prime concern is building unity? I'm only trying to understand the unique paradox of your position, where your strong bond for SB co-exists with a general estrangement from his best creations. Is your rejection limited to the Seniors or did you ever take your case to Bd Themselves through the corporeal or incorporeal method (meditation)? When I decided to leave I had an exit interview. On the question of honoring those who came and left: remember the sakar version that said the souls of Christ, Buddha etc. would come and take this knowledge and leave? What if, thinking within your present faith, this has happened: would you say then that the BKs are "dissing" the Prophet souls, the greatness of whom they otherwise (theoretically?) recognize through faith in the murlis? Let us suppose, toying within the framework of your present faith and for the sake of conjecture or argument, that you are the Christ soul. Is it likely that the 108 souls (existing within the framework of your faith in the knowledge) would not recognize you or anyone playing the Christ soul and simply dismiss him as "some disgruntled 'xbk' Brahmin" not worth a second thought? And if Christ took enough power from SB and left (according to the early Versions of God Almighty) why isn't he pointing the way to Madhuban or playing a more apparent and supportive role for his devotees at this critical time? In the early days we used to surmise that the present Pope must be the Christ soul (remember?) but as far as I am aware he never visited Madhuban or 'took knowledge' as the murli says. And where does this leave Jesus? Shouldn't he be close to the Pope at this end time? These are all deep points of knowledge eh? Too deep for the seniors who are busy 'dissing' them? I guess there's a lot more to reflect on my brother Gy _________________ "Those were the days my friend ...."
Atma Joined: 26 Feb 2004 Posts: 98 |
Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 9:40 am Post subject: |
arjuna wrote:
In an Avyakta Vani dated 13.4.2003, which was narrated before a a large group of BK teachers including the administrative chiefs, but was not published officially, Avyakta Baapdada had used very stern language and indirectly issued a warning that those who do not mend their ways may be sent to Iraq.
Arjuna, You have stimulated my curiousity here. I take it that you yourself would have a handwritten copy of the version you refer to above. Can you summarize or - even better - reproduce the relevant extracts here, so that I and other members can see the context in which Baapdada's comments were made? I find it 'interesting' that the murli was apparently 'ducked' by not being printed and mass circulated. That would give the PBKs something to talk about...as they claim that the seniors have huge egos and avoid embarrassment at all cost.
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